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June 4, 2013

Review: Telergy-The Legend Of Goody Cole

Telergy
is a new “band” to The Ancient One, and I use the word band in its
widest sense, as Telergy is the brainchild of one man, Robert McClung.
Robert is a composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist and started
Telergy back in 2009 when his aim was to use the best musicians
available across the globe to bring life, musically speaking, to
historical events through the use of classical, world, jazz and
progressive rock. The debut album, Exodus, was released to critical acclaim in 2011 and a further two years down the line; we have album number two, The Legend Of Goody Cole.

The Legend of Goody Cole
tells the story of a woman (Eunice “Goody” Cole) who was convicted of
witchcraft, imprisoned, had her land confiscated, and upon her release
and subsequent death, was buried in an unmarked grave. Her ghost then
reportedly wandered the town at night looking for her gravestone. What a
superb storyline for a concept album and the big question is whether
the music can do justice to this terrific story.

The album, The Legend of Goody Cole,
comprises 16 tracks and runs close to the hour mark in length. Half of
these tracks are scene setters and tend to be very short pieces (7 of
the 8 are under a minute in length) designed to carry the storyline
across the album and to link the main musical themes. Of the main
musical themes, track 14, “Ghosts,” is the longest at 10:26 minutes and
track 10, “Incarceration,” is the shortest at only 2:36 minutes.

Choosing
highlights from a concept album is difficult since the album as a whole
is literally one big track and should be listened to in its entirety.
Despite the difficulty, I would go for the following 3 tracks as
highlights, “Verdict,” “Ghosts” and “Exoneration.”

Track
8, “Verdict” (3:04) has a real wall of sound starting point with
thundering bass and drums, which blast along until, over the top, comes a
superb bit of guitar showmanship prior to a choral chant of “Guilty”
repeated a few times. A stunning keyboard led passage carries the track
on and the track builds with the powerful rhythm unit to the fore. There
then appears a magnificent violin passage which simply rides roughshod
over everything, and before the chants of “Guilty” return to take the
track out, there are some distant horns heard.

“Ghost”
(10:26) starts with strings and ethereal voices to set the scene before
the voice of Goody explains why she walks the town and the music is
provided by a superb combination of piano and flute. This paints an
amazingly atmospheric picture as the flautist is given center stage
before the drums become more insistent and as the track builds, there
are stunning choral effects. A guitar starts to pick out a stunning
metal theme to a backdrop of strings and gothic chanting. At this point,
however, there is a little dip into the stereotyped progressive metal
area with the metronomic drum thrashing, which I found a little
distracting. As the track progresses to the finale, metal guitar riffs
abound, the chanting reappears and the guitar then literally “takes
wing” and flies over everything before a chilling statement from Goody
takes the track out.

The
final track on the album, “Exoneration” (4:50) is a supremely
melancholic piece, with plucked acoustic guitar and a somber, sonorous
cello carving out a melody. This encompasses the finalization of the
story with Goody being appeased. The track is a beautiful haunting piece
of work, and a fitting end to The Legend Of Goody Cole.

Overall,
I am still not too sure if this album works in the way it should. It
has all the proper ingredients, a great storyline and, at times,
superbly written music to complement the story. Unfortunately, although
the short linking tracks (“Scene 1”, “Scene 2” etc.) do carry the
storyline, I don’t feel some of the instrumental tracks have enough
going on to continue to carry the story. A case in point is that
although some of the main chunks of music which are meant to convey the
continuous story about Goody do work in some passages, there are too
many times the music has more than one foot in the progressive metal
camp with heavy riffing guitars and metronomic drumming.

Certainly
well worth a listen, and a huge undertaking by Robert McClung to bring
everything together, but it falls a bit short of an essential purchase,
at least for this reviewer.